Guide for Best Business Card Sizes and Print Practices

What size is a business card supposed to be? What are some common printing practices you need to be aware of? We answer all your questions in this business card size and dimensions guide. 

However old-timey, the common business card is still a valuable asset for promoting your business and making connections. 

You can create the most stellar LinkedIn profile, most engaging social media and build the best website, but nothing beats a high quality business card.

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Standard business card sizes and aspect ratios for making a custom business card

What size is a business card meant to be? Before we get into the details of business card dimensions, here are a few things to note. 

• The size of a business card is not the same in every country.
• You have to take into account the bleed area of a business card.
• You also need to leave a safe zone around the business card.
• It might be hard to convert pixels, inches, centimeters and millimeters if you’re designing a business card from scratch.

Standard sizes in different countries

Similar to European-cut and US-standard clothes, business cards also have their differences. You’ll find the business card dimensions in both the imperial and metric systems.

• In the United States and Canada, the standard size business card has these dimensions:

• Belgium, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and other European countries:

• Australia, Colombia, India, New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam:

• Argentina, Brazil, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Ukraine

• China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore

• Japan

If you didn’t find the country you need information for, here is a complete sheet of business card dimensions by country.

Also, don’t forget that when converting between card sizes in pixels, millimeters and inches, there is a big chance that you will get decimal numbers that are hard to round off. So, before you definitely agree on the graphic design and print business cards, make sure you check a reliable source about the correct dimensions and ratio.

Best practices for business card printing

Apart from the size of your business card and the aspect ratio, there are plenty of smaller details that you might not even think about before sending them for print. Here’s what you have to double-check.

Format

When you or your designer work on a business card, the best format to save it in is the PDF format. This format allows editing, sharing, collaborating on a file and a higher security with digital documents. It is also much easier to edit a PDF file as a non-designer than in Photoshop or Indesign.

Safe area

The safe area of a business card is the margins around the main design elements to make sure you won’t cut anything important in the process of printing. In a standard US business card, the safety margins are one eighth of an inch from the cutting edge. Keep logos and text safe within a 3.34” by 1.84” area.

Bleed area

If your business card has background color or elements that spread all the way to the ends, you need to add a bleed area around the finished size to prevent white lines after trimming it. The bleed size is one-eighth of an inch zone beyond the trim area that will ensure that your business card doesn’t have white borders after full-color printing or being die-cut.

Colors

As is the standard in printing, it is best to use a CMYK color scheme. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (or key color). The reason we use CMYK for printing is that it covers the largest number of light color ranges in comparison to using an RGB color scheme (red, green, blue). K or key color is added to the scheme because it doesn’t cover very deep dark colors.

Text

When it comes to typography, our advice isn’t so much about what kind of font you should use, but it’s more focused on leaving the text live and editable, as you might need to edit text in the future.

Different designs

Consider safe areas and bleed areas with unique business cards for custom printing. Some such designs include: rounded corners, square business cards, folded business cards, matte or high gloss business cards, double sided, etc. Keep in mind that only standard size cards fit in business card holders.

Need business cards? We can help!

We hope this answers your questions about business card size and dimensions. We also have plenty of handy templates you might want to check out, such as our Google docs business cards templates, CEO cards or these trendy black business card designs.

However, don’t forget that a template can only get you so far! No matter how well designed, a template will hardly be a perfect match to your brand identity. 

The cost of custom business cards isn’t huge. Still, this one-off investment might not be worth it. 

Instead, you can get all your business graphics designed at a flat monthly rate. Business cards, flyers, digital and print ads, even logos and websites!

With ManyPixels you can get started for as low as $599 a month. 

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Have any questions? Book a free 1:1 consultation, and we’d be happy to help!